by S J Williams
Henry nodded, eyes downcast.
“Yes. He always was like that before he met you, too. Well, perhaps he didn’t smile as much.” Henry treated her with a quick grin. “But nothing to be worried about. Effie.” His voice turned serious. “He didn’t laugh once while you were gone. Barely smiled. Whenever we were hunting vampires, he was like a machine. And those were the good times. At least then I was sure he would be there the next day. When he went off on his own, claiming he needed some time out, I really thought I might not see him again.” He took a deep breath.
Effie waited for him to finish, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what was coming next. It already felt like her heart was breaking. Poor Sebastian. He thought she was the one who was most wronged by what Bartholomew had done and perhaps she had died. But, in her opinion, it was far easier to die than to be left behind, forced to pick up the pieces of a life that had had a massive hole torn in it.
“Since you’ve come back.” Henry continued, his voice brightening. “I’ve not had reason to worry. Sure, we’ve had lots of things going on and, God knows, he has plenty to keep him busy at the moment. But he actually looks hopeful. He looks like he wants to be here. I owe you that, Effie. I owe you my friend.”
“No.” Effie grabbed his hands, shaking her head. “You haven’t said it, but I can read between the lines. If anyone is in debt, it’s me. I owe you Sebastian because you are the one who’s been keeping him alive for all these years. I might be the reason he’s out of danger, for now at least.” She added wryly. “But, if it wasn’t for you being his friend, he wouldn’t have been here for me to come back to. It can’t have been easy but you stayed with him. So, thank you.” She leaned forwards and kissed him on the forehead, silencing his protests.
“Something I should know about?” An amused voice from over their heads. They looked up to see Sebastian watching them, one eyebrow raised in question, his lips twisted in a crooked smile.
“Henry and I have decided we’re going to be best friends forever.” She told him with a bright grin.
“What does that make me then?” He asked, putting on a grumpy face as he reclaimed his seat.
“Oh, I think we’re a little more than friends now.” She told him, fighting with her face not to go pink as she thought of how they’d spent the previous night.
“Oh? This sounds interesting.” Henry poked his nose through the gap between the seats. “What were you two up to last night?” When Effie ducked her head to hide the very real blush that had sprung up at his words, he wagged a finger at her.
“Uh uh. As your designated best friend, I demand to know all the umph—”
Henry’s words were abruptly cut off when Sebastian planted his palm over Henry’s face, pushing his head back between the seats. Effie raised her eyebrows mischievously at him, enjoying the heat she saw creep into his eyes. Sebastian had proved just how extensive his imagination could be over the midnight hours. When she had finally woken up to daylight, Effie hadn’t felt any sense of impending doom for her upcoming trial. Her whole body had felt limp and relaxed and thoroughly well used.
The dread had come later.
“We need to think of a way of proving that it was Bartholomew and not me who published that book.” She said now, her laughter fading as if it had never been.
“I agree with you,” Lucien said from across the table, “but that is easier said than done. He’s covered his tracks well and, apart from our evidence of finding the blood potions in his room, we haven’t got any way of pinning him down. At this stage, I don’t believe any of us would count as reliable, impartial witnesses. We don’t even know if he was the vampire Amedeo mentions in his diary. Amedeo never mentions the vampire by name and he left precious few clues about his identity.”
“From what I could gather, this vampire wasn’t a friend to the immortals he mentioned. Some of the secrets he spilled were downright malicious,” Effie mused.
“A vampire and a monk. It is an interesting combination.” Henry laughed.
“A very well informed vampire.” Sebastian added. “That kind of knowledge required more than passing observations on their activities and habits at the time. It would have required intent surveillance over several years. Most vampires make a point of avoiding going anywhere near immortals.”
“Isn’t it a good idea to know thy enemy and all that?” Effie asked, wrinkling her nose at him.
Sebastian shook his head. “Not when it was much easier just to establish oneself in a locality where there weren’t many immortals. There were even fewer of us back then, so finding a town large enough where a few dozen people a year could go missing without question, but didn’t have a strong immortal presence, wasn’t too hard.”
“As I recall, vampires preferred busy trade routes where faces come and go all the time. If some of those faces were never seen again, well, no one thought twice about it.” Henry added.
Catarina pulled a face. “It made catching vampires bloody difficult.” She nudged Lucien beside her. “Do you remember chasing after that Chinese vampire who’d been steadily eating his way along the silk road?”
Lucien nodded, smiling grimly. “I remember. He kept giving us the slip by hiding in rolled up bolts of cloth.”
Effie latched onto their words, eager for any distraction. “What was it like, travelling back then?”
“Dusty and uncomfortable. This,” Catarina gestured to the carriage around them, “is so luxurious, it’s ridiculous.”
“Don’t get me started on camels.” Henry said with a shudder. “Give me a good horse any day.”
“Or a good motorbike?” Effie asked innocently.
“Even better.” Henry said, a look of immense satisfaction on his face. Effie grinned. She’d watched him lovingly cover his bike with a dust sheet that morning. He might have whispered some words, too, but she’d been too far away to hear.
“I would have thought you’d like camels.” Catarina teased. “They’ve certainly got enough attitude to keep even you entertained.”
Henry pulled a face at her. “I prefer my audiences to be a little easier than that.”
Sebastian leaned down to murmur in Effie’s ear. “I believe Henry is prejudiced. He had one rather unfortunate experience with a camel which set his back up for life. In a word: spitting.”
Effie winced in sympathy as Henry jumped up behind them.
“I swear that thing could reach ten metres. And it was like getting hit by a bullet. I had to ride that animal for ten days. And the bastard was greedy. He ate my rations right out of my hand.”
“Well matched, then.” Sebastian said with a wicked glint in his eye.
“Oh ha ha.” Henry said sarcastically as the others snorted with laughter. “I’d have gladly given that animal away for free if anyone else would have taken him.”
Effie sighed and sat back in her seat, feeling a sudden wave of weariness sweep over her. She wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t got much sleep last night and the constant tension was gnawing away at her reserves. Sebastian slipped his arm behind her.
“Sleep now.” He murmured, too low for the others to hear. “You’ll feel better for it.”
She smiled dozily at him. Sleep would be good. She just didn’t think she could, not while hunters stalked her dreams. Sebastian might have been what had kept her awake for most of the night but, for the rest of it, her sleep had been riddled with nightmares.
She could feel herself nodding off when a shrill electronic beeping filled the carriage. They all looked at Lucien as he scrambled to find his phone.
“My smart phone might not be indestructible but at least it’s got better ringtone options.” Henry murmured. Effie hid her smile behind her hand.
“Ah, Antonio.” Lucian said, his voice perhaps a little louder than it needed to be. “You— Ah, yes, I was hoping… Really? That’s… Yes, that’s interesting… No, I had no idea… Yes, at the university… No, do you think you could send… Perfect. Yes, excellent… Yes, it�
�s the same address… Paris. I know, very lucky…” He gave the others a wry smile at that. “Right, thank you. Thank you again. And you too. Bye.”
He took the phone away from his ear and stared at it.
“You know,” Henry said thoughtfully. “I think you weren’t projecting your voice enough. There were a couple of passengers in coach K who couldn’t quite hear you.”
Lucien started and blinked at him. “Coach K? What has that got to do with anything?”
“Ignore him.” Catarina glared at Henry’s unrepentant face. “What was that about?”
“That was the results from the analysis I asked for those flowers. Disturbing to say the least.”
“Well?” She hissed, only just managing to keep her voice down. “What do you mean ‘disturbing’?”
“You know those red veins in the leaves, and the pink tinge to the petals?” He asked, his face darkening under a frown. “It appears Bartholomew achieved that effect by growing the plants in a solution whose main ingredient seemed to be derived from human blood.”
“Blood?” Effie stared out of the window, completely blind to the passing scenery. “I thought it looked like blood, when I was in the lab. I thought I was just being paranoid, you know, vampires on the brain or something.”
“You can rarely be too paranoid when vampires are involved.” Sebastian muttered under his breath.
“But surely, blood would just act like a fertiliser or something?” Effie asked. “I mean. You don’t normally get plants like this on battle fields or grave yards.”
“Who knows what breeding programme Bartholomew has had going all these years?” Lucien asked with a helpless shrug. “He’s had the time to perfect the genetic improvements that Fra Amedeo was speculating about. He’s found a way of mixing the blood with the flowers that might work better than just adding them to the blood he drinks.”
“This shows one thing.” Sebastian said. “We can’t just dismiss Barty’s experiments as harmless. We can’t underestimate him.”
There was no arguing with that.
Effie did eventually fall asleep, her head slipping down to rest on Sebastian’s shoulder. He played with the silky end of her plait. She’d joked this morning that a French plait would be very appropriate for where they were going. The haunted look in her eyes had told him exactly what the joke was: a desperate show of bravery. He would happily go on the rampage if it meant he could spare her all of this. But not right at that moment. For now, he was happy just to watch her sleep and to marvel at how peaceful that simple thing made him feel.
“We should turn her.”
He looked up at Catarina’s quiet words.
“You, more than anyone, know why that’s a bad idea,” he reminded her.
She gave him an unhappy look.
“Jerome turned me because he liked playing the hero. This is different. Effie’s life is on the line.”
Lucien shifted beside her.
“Effie’s life is on the line now only so long as her name isn’t cleared. With a bit of work, we could probably do that. If we turn her illegally, the council will never fully accept her and the rest of the immortals will follow their lead. On top of that, whoever turns her will also have their life forfeit, if not all four of us for being complicit. You know all this.”
“It’s stupid.” She snapped. “Look at me! I turned out fine.”
“You know that’s not what the council care about.” Sebastian said quietly.
Effie stirred lightly on his shoulder, a frown etching itself between her eyebrows. Moments later, her eyes fluttered open. She blinked a couple of times, then noticed that everyone was looking at her. Flushing slightly, she sat up.
“Sorry, what did I miss?”
“Effie, do you remember when we talked about rogue immortals?” Catarina asked, her voice crisp and businesslike.
Still blinking the sleep from her eyes, Effie nodded.
“Isn’t that when you turn an immortal who is nearly dead and they come out mad?” She looked around. “What about it?”
“That’s the scenario the council is trying to avoid,” Lucien said quickly.
“But the council’s definition for rogue immortals is a bit broader than that,” Sebastian interrupted with a glare for Catarina. She tossed up her hands before slumping deeper into her seat, her arms folded.
“What do you mean?” Effie pressed.
Lucien paused with an apologetic glance at Catarina. She waved off his concern impatiently.
“Basically,” she said, “if someone from the council hasn’t personally witnessed a turn to testify that it was done correctly, with full consent and healthy participants, then they classify the new immortal as a rogue and punish the immortal who turned them for taking unnecessary risks. They don’t care if the new immortal was nearly dying or not.”
“But I thought they sentenced the sire to death?” Effie asked, alarm in her eyes.
“The council is prepared to be flexible,” Catarina said sarcastically. “If they just turned a healthy person without consent, they might get a fine or something.”
“A word to the wise,” Henry butted in over Sebastian’s and Effie’s shoulders, “the council likes fines.”
Catarina nodded at him. “But if the immortal really went all out and turned someone who was on the point of dying, say, then they might be executed. As a deterrent, it works well.”
Effie swallowed. “And what happens to the rogue immortal?”
“Mad or not, they get watched for however long they live.” Catarina’s bitterness came through loud and clear.
“Do you know a rogue immortal who hasn’t gone mad?” Effie asked cautiously, sensing Catarina’s caustic mood.
“So far.” Henry muttered quietly and taking his life in his hands, Sebastian thought, going by the glare Catarina sent at him.
“What am I missing?” Effie asked, looking puzzled as she glanced between Henry and Catarina.
Catarina breathed out heavily through her nose. “Do I look like I’m about to go crazy to you?”
That was debatable, Sebastian thought, but glanced down at Effie to see her reaction.
“You’re the rogue immortal?” She breathed.
“My sire defied the council when he turned me.” Catarina said, her voice brittle. “He was hunted down and executed. The council haven’t stopped watching me since.”
“You were nearly dying when he turned you?” Effie stared at Catarina, her heart in her eyes.
“No!” Catarina said, slamming her fist onto the tabletop. The plastic cracked. Guiltily, she looked around to check if any of the humans had noticed. More quietly, she added, “well, maybe badly injured. But he could have healed me. I wasn’t about to die. The council keeps the law because they like throwing their weight around. If it wasn’t for that and the stupid requirement to keep tabs on us, there wouldn’t be any need for a council and they know it.”
“The council does have its uses,” Lucien began, a note of doubt in his tone. Sebastian looked at him speculatively. It was no secret that he, Henry and Catarina were no fans of the council, but it looked like they might have an ally in Lucien too. No small thing, that. “But it wouldn’t be a good thing to turn her right now, anyway,” Lucien continued, “not if we have to run at any moment. We would make ourselves, not to mention Effie, too vulnerable. Better to wait until all this is over and we have the council’s approval.”
Effie was starting to look nervous. “Could the council block my turn, if they decide they don’t like me?”
Sebastian found her hand and squeezed it.
“We won’t let that happen.” He promised, hoping that it was a promise he’d be able to keep. He’d known and respected Jerome, Catarina’s sire, right down to the last decision the other immortal had ever made. He knew that, put in a similar position, he would do exactly the same thing, even if it meant taking out the council first.
14
They arrived in Paris late in the evening. Walking out of the
Gare de Lyon, they waited while Henry hailed a couple of taxis.
“Where are we going to stay?” Effie asked Catarina. The immortal, still stewing over their talk of rogue immortals and her sire, only glanced at her.
“Lucien has a house in the city.” She muttered distractedly.
Effie nodded. Of course he did. She was starting to suspect she could turn up in any major European city and find that someone would have a house somewhere, or would know someone who did. Lucien was helping Henry load their luggage into the back of the first taxi. Effie drifted over to them.
She grabbed the handles of her own case before Henry could and hefted it to slide it into the boot along with the others. She shrugged when Henry frowned at her.
“Sorry. I just feel like I need to be useful somehow.”
Henry snorted and shook his head. “Good to know the old British tradition of apologising for just about anything is still alive and well in the younger generations.”
She smiled wanly. “We are what we are.” Frowning slightly, she asked Lucien, “Do you have internet access?”
Lucien looked surprised but nodded. Henry snorted.
“Congratulations old man. I think that counts as a rite of passage. You have finally embraced the twenty-first century.” Lucien shoved Henry’s shoulder but turned back to Effie.
“Do you need it for anything in particular?”
She nodded. “All this research on Fra Amedeo has reminded me of some articles I read a while back. I think they might be useful.”
Lucien perked up. “What articles exactly?”
Catarina cut in. “Don’t nerd out on us too much, will you?”
On those sarcastic words, she ducked into the back seat of one of the taxis and scooted across to the far end. Lucien rolled his eyes and followed her.
“Do you want to take the other taxi?” Henry asked, eyeing the space where Catarina had disappeared warily.
